Africanaussie

I try to cut everything way back at this time of year so that I dont get lots of leggy growth as the plants spurt forth with the approaching wet season.  Last year our wet season was very late in arriving and in fact, we did not get as much rain as usual. The mandevilla vine which shades the herb spiral has had a very severe haircut, which let in lots of light. I need to cut back the lady slipper orchid vine as it is too heavy for the tree it is clambering over - weeping tea tree.  It is looking so beautiful though that I am going to leave it a little longer.  No photo - it keeps turning sideways - does anyone else have that problem? Vegetables and Herbs  I am going to try to keep some greens growing until the very end of the dry season and in actual fact planted out a new supply.   Tatsoi has become my very favourite green, it survived with very little care while I was away, so I added a little more compost around the base of each plant.  The eggpl...

The theme for this months Garden Share collective is taste.  Here are the others participating. We have had an extended wet season, and so my garden is not as far along as it normally is at this time of year.  I purchased an eggplant and jalapeno and planted them in the far back corner.  the eggplant has to go into a pot because of the bacterial wilt in the soil.  Even then they dont always survive.  it is just a case of wait and see.  I thought I had lost all the tatsoi and rocket in the flooding rains, but they seem to be bouncing back nicely.  Fresh greens in a salad is the best taste ever, and I am sure loaded with vitamins and minerals compared to what we can buy in a plastic packet.  The bed along the side fence has a few volunteer cherry tomato, and one capsicum which is doing very well.  there are also a couple of cucumber, which go back and forth between looking on their last legs with powdery mildew and thriving....  I...

Happy New Year to all of you!  I wish you all lots of Health, Wealth and Happiness! Dear Lizzie at   Strayed from the table   has her post up and running ready to link up to.   I really enjoy seeing how everyone elses garden is faring, although I must admit after looking at Lizzies okra I have okra envy - I really thought okra would grow well here, but mine is struggling. The humidity and heat over the Christmas season was really oppressive, and then over the weekend it rained!  When I aded these stones last year I dug a bit of a ditch on the outer side, but clearly that was not quite enough for the quantity of rain that we have.  I started to make this path a little lower, hoping that the water would run down there and soak into the ground to be used up by the plants.  I discovered that the asparagus roots are reaching out into the path, so moved the side of the perrenial bed over a bit, but probably need to make another plan, maybe just a skinn...

Once again it is time to link up with Lizzie at the Garden Share collective I looked back on last month where I was saying how dry it was, and it is still dry!  We had a few sprinkles, but watering the garden is something that we just do not do here!  I put up an extra shade cloth, but really need to purchase in some sugar cane mulch for the veggie patch.  I have been using my compost, but it is not enough.  We have never seen so many leaves falling, all the compost bins are continually topped up, I have to keep adding water so that they can rot down. I have two shade cloths up, and the only thing I am trying to do is keep the weeds at bay. The yellow cherrry tomatoes are still producing, and I have two types of eggplant the tsalonika long purple and a little round thai  white one that I got from a  lady at the markets. Both growing in wicking beds. The asparagus bed was quite over run when I returned so that had to be attended to.  I had mul...

I feel so blessed to have a garden, with flowers and little dribbles of food (we certainly cannot live on what I grow!) ......... and butterflies ...... and a peaceful place to sit and enjoy it all.   There was some lovely soft seaweed on the beach yesterday afternoon, so we gathered a couple of bagfuls.  I laid it out as mulch on the asparagus bed, but clearly will have to get some more.  I am sure I can be talked into another walk on the beach some time soon.  This asparagus stalk was chopped up and divided between the two of us - tender all the way to the bottom.  The Mary Washington is skinny little stalks as you can see in the background.  I have decided I will go ahead and plant some more purple asparagus seeds.    Look!  I have some eggplant too :)  Purple basil - this is such awesome basil - leaves of this and also amaranth, parsley and lettuce were  added to the leafy mix of our salad.  I guess we are getting ...

The wet season has been making its presence known and over the weekend the roads were flooded, making us housebound.  I managed to do quite a bit of sewing, and then the whole house got a very good clean.  Good, now I dont need to feel guilty when the garden calls:)  First thing was to cut back some of the mandevilla vine which the franzipani has been trying to escape from.  I hope with all the extra light it will flower a bit more.  I was also pleased to see strawberry flowers - this is the first time I have grown strawberries.  I had two hanging pots and the one disintegrated in a heap after just a couple of months.  I think I might get some more pots that actually attach to the fence with nails - they seem to do better in this climate than the hanging baskets.  I think I might move them to a wooden fence out the front as well. My new seeds were calling to be planted, and with the sun making an appearance on Sunday afternoon I ventured ...

I don't know what happened - I just took a break from blogging.  As each of my eggplant turned up their noses and succumbed to bacterial wilt I began to wonder if gardening was really all it is cracked up to be....  This was how I was feeling about trying to grow a few measly vegetables in the tropics.  What with the cost of organic fertilizers, mulches, compost bins, seaweed tonics, etc I was probably paying about 50.00 for each cucumber I got out of my veggie garden!  Then I saw a flower spike on my aloe vera :)  Gosh, I wondered, have any of my loyal readers ever seen an aloe vera in flower (I never have) It is such a pretty flower too - look at those little bell shaped flowers, and it sure is attracting lots of pollinators.  So that one little flower spike has managed to give me back my mojo!   We have been enjoying the cucumber, and even have enough to share with the neighbors. There is also lots of bok choy which I have been ...

One of the first things I did after returning from three weeks away was to survey the garden.  The lychee tree is full of leaves, and most of the plants underneath it have recovered quite well from the sudden blast of sunshine. Luckily we have had a little rain to ease the way, and my darling hubby has been watering. Of course it also allowed a spate of weeds to grow up everywhere!  Among the weeks are plenty of cherry tomato plants which I have left where they volunteered. They fill in the gaps and hopefully will give us some tomatoes.  This has not been a good year for tomatoes - maybe not enough sunny days to ripen them.  We often have cloud cover and I think they like clear sunny days, or so they tell me!  It is warm though - I have not stopped swimming all through the winter, other than when I was away. The gardens seems quite happy.  In the veggie garden the kale, lettuce and carrots have come along well...

One of my favorite fruits is figs - I can remember having a huge fig tree outside my bedroom window growing up in South Africa.  Now -  that dry temperate climate is very, very different to where I live now, about as far away as possible in fact.   When I saw fig trees for sale I knew I just had to have one - that little child in me kept saying - how delicious those figs were - don't you remember?  I bought the tiny thing and put it into a little blue pot that I also just had to have.... Isn't it just as cute as a button?  A real little fig tree.  I hope it survives the heat and humidity and grows up to be a nice big fruit bearing fig tree.  In a pot of course - I think I would probably have to find someplace for it to live during our wet season where it is not quite so wet.  It is little - just look at it next to my little lime tree. :)  But I now have a fig tree. A veritable...

I used to love to move the furniture around, but our little unit is so small and everything is just where it has to be, so I had to take the urge outside. :) After my lovely neighbor gave me a garden chair a couple of months ago I placed it snugly under the tree fern.  Nobody sat there, leaves fell all over it, and as the fern got bigger I wondered about where else the chair could go.....  (I put up these "bali" flags for my MIL's 80th birthday and quite like them there - they might stay).   Back to the point - that chair did look a little less than inviting didn't it? So.... after giving the ponytail palm a  bit of a haircut and moving it over to share its space I found the perfect spot for the chair.  It also means that the small heleconia plant can spread out a bit and be noticed - gosh you cant even see the space that the chair took up... While I was checking out the cha...

The bandicoots came back!   Some old gardeners around the area say that you shouldnt water in the afternoon as this brings the worms to the surface and attracts bandicoots.  Well, we have been trying to get the grass pieces that we added to grow, and so we have been watering.  One morning it looked as though fifty bandicoots had come in and dug it all up! Bandicoot party!  I didnt take photos as I was too sad. they totally ignored the trap that was set to catch them.  Too busy dancing around and digging up my grass! I carefully inspected the back fence and found that behind my archway was the area they had got in.  Out came all the messy cats whiskers - dont worry I saved a few and planted them off to to the side, so we will still have the honeyeaters visiting. Wow that really opened it up! This area does look a bit straggly and untidy now, I will have to work on that..    I moved the grow bag there in which...